In 1924 Colonel L. E. W. van Albada demonstrated a wide angle stereoscope to the Optical Society of London. (Proc. Optical Soc. London 1924-25.) The special merit of his stereoscope lay in the fact that the magnifiers provided an 85 or 90 degree field of view--twice the usual field angle and four times the scenic area. He succeeded in achieving this wide angle by neutralizing the distortion of his magnifiers with a compensating distortion deliberately introduced into the images being viewed, which were, of course, black-and-white. The magnifiers of his system were expensive: even though they did not have to be corrected for distortion, they did have to be corrected for lateral chromatism--the "color fringing" commonly seen in large magnifiers at the edge of their fields of view. To this day the cost of large lenses corrected for lateral chromatism has doomed stereoscopy to fields of view ranging from 20 degrees (e.g. "Viewmaster") to about 50 degrees (e.g. "Stereo Realist"). Only small or distant objects can be rendered full size in such narrow fields, so that most subjects are miniaturized and distorted. There is little or no possibility of looking around in the scene, so landscapes, buildings and interiors lose their impact. Even portraits must be made from a distant perspective and cannot be close and personal. In addition, because the frame of the scene is clearly before the eyes, rather than being substantially beyond the edge of the field, we have the unnatural strain complained of in ordinary 3-D systems and called the "window" effect in which the eyes seem to be looking through two holes, or the content of the scene seems to be obtruding itself through a distant window, depending on where the designer decides to locate the frame stereoptically. This effect is quite foreign to ordinary experience and largely destroys the "presence" that stereo imagery ought to have. Stereoscopy has, in consequence of these factors, never become more than a novelty.